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The Verge's Essential Phone Review: An Arcane Artifact From an Unrealized Future (theverge.com) 55

Posted by BeauHD from the unrealized-potential dept.
An anonymous reader shares Dieter Bohn's review of the Essential Phone: Even though it was announced less than three months ago at the Code Conference, there's already enough mythology surrounding the Essential Phone to fill a book. It comes from a brand-new billion-dollar startup led by the person who helped create Android itself, Andy Rubin. That origin binds it up with the history of all smartphones in a way that doesn't usually apply to your run-of-the-mill device. The phone was also delayed a bit, a sign that this tiny company hasn't yet quite figured out how to punch above its weight class -- which it's certainly trying to do. Although it runs standard Android, it's meant to act as a vanguard for Essential's new ecosystem of smart home devices and services connected by the mysterious Ambient OS. Even if we trust that Rubin's futuristic vision for a connected home will come to pass, it's not going to happen overnight. Instead, all we really have right now is that future's harbinger, a well-designed Android phone that I've been testing for the past week. Available unlocked or at Sprint, the $699 Essential Phone is an ambitious device. It has a unique way to connect modular accessories, starting with a 360-degree camera. It has a bold take on how to make a big, edge-to-edge screen paired with top-flight materials such as ceramic and titanium. And it has a dual camera system that is meant to compete with other flagship devices without adding any thickness to the phone. That would be a lot for even a massive company like Samsung or Apple to try to do with a single phone. For a tiny company like Essential, the question is simply this: is it trying to do too much? In conclusion, Bohn writes: "The Essential Phone is doing so much right: elegant design, big screen, long battery life, and clean software. And on top of all that, it has ambitions to do even more with those modules. If you asked Android users what they wanted in the abstract, I suspect a great many of them would describe this exact device. But while the camera is pretty good, it doesn't live up to the high bar the rest of the phone market has set. Sometimes artifacts are better to behold than they are to use."
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The Verge's Essential Phone Review: An Arcane Artifact From an Unrealized Future More

The Verge's Essential Phone Review: An Arcane Artifact From an Unrealized Future

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  • Oblig (Score:5, Funny)

    by fiannaFailMan ( 702447 ) on Friday August 18, 2017 @06:07PM (#55044551) Journal

    No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Ritz_Just_Ritz ( 883997 )

      No wireless? What exactly is that supposed to mean?

      For wifi: 802.11ac Wi-Fi with MIMO
      For bluetooth: Bluetooth 5.0 LE
      For wireless bands: LTE Bands 1/2/3/4/5/7/8/11/12/13/17/20/21/25/26/28/29/30/66 and TDD-LTE Bands 38/39/40/41/42/43

      And for the folks complaining about lack of headphone jack, it comes with a little usb-C to 3.5mm headhpone jack adapter. That's fine for me. I almost never use the actual headphone jack anyway. My phones are usually connected to whatever audio system I'm consuming via blue

      • No wireless? What exactly is that supposed to mean?

        For wifi: 802.11ac Wi-Fi with MIMO
        For bluetooth: Bluetooth 5.0 LE
        For wireless bands: LTE Bands 1/2/3/4/5/7/8/11/12/13/17/20/21/25/26/28/29/30/66 and TDD-LTE Bands 38/39/40/41/42/43

        Oh you sweet summer child.

        But anyways, the main thing from all this is smartphones are soon (there already?) to be commodity hardware -unless made by Apple. Valuing $yet_another_phone_maker that high is just silly, regardless of the founder's pedigree.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Hadlock ( 143607 )

        No wireless charging. My Nexus 4 had it way back in 2012, Nexus 5 had it too. If you've used it, you know it's the greatest thing ever.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by jon3k ( 691256 )
          Can you explain this because I've never understood the excitement some people have over wireless charging. You have to put it on a pad, right? Every night, I take my phone and I place it on the dock next to my bed (at 50-60% battery remaining), because it's also my alarm clock. I wake up and it's at 100%, obviously, and I lift it off of the dock.

          In your use case, how does wireless charging help? I'm especially interested because you describe it as "the greatest thing ever" so I feel like I must be mis

          • Re:Oblig (Score:4, Insightful)

            by JohnFen ( 1641097 ) on Friday August 18, 2017 @08:45PM (#55045489)

            I think the appeal is that it's kinda sci-fi.

            It's also enormously wasteful of power.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mspohr ( 589790 )

            Wireless charging is "the greatest thing ever".
            I've had it on my Nexus phones for the past 5 years.
            Never fiddle with a plug to start or stop charging. Just set the phone down on a pad to charge. Just grab the phone and go (especially useful for the car).
            I have pads all over the house and in my cars.
            Try it, you'll like it.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by jon3k ( 691256 )
              But I have a dock, I just sit my phone on it. I don't even really look, you just get close and slide it in (giggity). Takes a fraction of a second and I only do it once a day. What's the difference?

          • If you have a matching dock, it is about the same experience as wireless chaging. However, I believe that the majority of shells, covers and whatnot are incompatible with a dock. Wireless charging is the docking experience but working with all kinds of covers.

            Imagine if you, instead of just putting the phone in the dock every night, had to plug in a charging wire. You wouldn't want to go back to that, would you?

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by jon3k ( 691256 )
              Gotcha, so it's just basically a dock for any phone. That makes sense, I can appreciate that. Not that plugging in a cable was really that awful, but it's definitely easier to just drop the phone on a dock and not fiddle with the cable.

              I guess I just imagined something more dramatic from hearing people talk about it. But I guess if you've not used a dock it really would get rid of the hassle of cables.

      • Not sure what all the bitching is about.

        I think the mistake you may be making is thinking that your needs are the same as other people's needs. They're not.

        I'm happy that phones like that meet your needs, I really am. But for some people, like myself, they don't. With headphone jacks, for example -- yes, I could get by without one by using an adapter or Bluetooth, but it would be a constant irritation. I use mine several hours per day. I could get by with 128G, but it would be tight and a constant irritation. I could get by without a replaceable

    • No jack, No SD card, No love.

  • Cost (Score:3)

    by amiga3D ( 567632 ) on Friday August 18, 2017 @06:07PM (#55044555)

    The imperative is to justify an exorbitant cost. There are too many Android phones that are excellent for a reasonable price. To charge ridiculous money you need to be better in every way, not a few.

    • The real justification for cost is : how much time will phones be updated ?

      All the cheap android phones are excellent today, but in two years (at best) you will no longer receive updates, which means basically that you have to buy a new phone if you want to stay secure.

      That's the only justification to buy a high-end Galaxy, a Pixel, or even better in this repspect, an iPhone.

      The day manufacturers manage to ship stock Android that can get security updates directly from Google, then things will change and

    • It's $699. When was the last time you shopped for a high end mobile phone? That's a bit over what you'd pay for a phone that came out 6 months to a year ago or one of the non-flagship devices, but on par with the latest flagship phones being released.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by skam240 ( 789197 )

        Sure, if you are only shopping top tier phones. I think the poster is referring to the fact that there are a ton of phones out there for very reasonable prices that do everything the average consumer would want reasonably well and for far less.

        Personally, as a long time Samsung loyalist, I'm done with Samsung unless they come out with something really different from their competitors. As it stands now, I look at their new phones and see minor feature advantages, system speed upgrades I don't need, features

  • I suspect this camera performance can be improved (Score:5, Interesting)

    by linuxguy ( 98493 ) on Friday August 18, 2017 @06:07PM (#55044557) Homepage

    If the underlying sensor, optics and image processor hardware is good, then the camera quality can be improved from where it is at today with future software updates. I don't see them having cut corners elsewhere and I doubt that they did with camera hardware. They were probably in a rush to ship the device and camera software was shipped when it got to the good enough point.

    I did work as a camera software engineer in a previous life. So I have a rough idea of how these things go.

  • With the same chips. There's not going to be anything too amazing on the hardware front. I'm less interested in what a $700 phone can do and more interested in how much performance they can squeeze one the sub $200 range. Now if 5g ever gets here I'll be interested in the high end again, especially if that's paired with better radios and new bandwidth so I don't keep going in and out of service

  • I will not touch this phone even with a 10ft pole (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bogaboga ( 793279 ) on Friday August 18, 2017 @06:24PM (#55044657)

    But while the camera is pretty good, it doesn't live up to the high bar the rest of the phone market has set.

    Absence of a 3.5 mm headphone jack is a non-starter for me.

    • I think I could get by with that these days, though I'd prefer to have one. The deal killer for me is the use of a screen that is not OLED.

    • Missing a headphone jack is a pretty huge problem. However, I would be willing to engage in the required shenanigans to work around it if the rest of the phone were somehow exceptional. This one isn't. It looks OK, but nowhere near exceptional.

  • Seems decent (Score:3)

    by JohnFen ( 1641097 ) on Friday August 18, 2017 @06:32PM (#55044695)

    But not for me. I don't care one bit about the camera, but the lack of a headphone jack is a fairly major problem. I don't think the battery is changeable, and that's a point in the minus column.

    The real problem for me, though, is the memory. 128Gb is unacceptably small for a device that you can't slip an SD card into. That's a showstopper right there.

    • 128Gb is unacceptably small for a device

      Thanks for providing some good laughs. Some people who post on the smartphone topics do indeed live in an ivory tower.

      I don't think the battery is changeable

      Most people don't care about this any more, and most phones don't have this feature.

      • Some people who post on the smartphone topics do indeed live in an ivory tower.

        *shrug*

        This is a $700 device. For that price, it shouldn't be more limiting than the $600 one I'm using right now.

        Most people don't care about this any more

        Maybe not, but that's why I said it's not for me, and I didn't say it's not for anyone.

    • The real problem for me, though, is the memory. 128Gb is unacceptably small for a device that you can't slip an SD card into.

      Yeah, 16 GB is awfully low for a high-end phone.

  • Apple eliminated std head phone jack but offered water proof. So a give get. As for wireless charging. I sometimes need to use my phone while charging. Video calls zap battery. The Essential seems decent on specs/price, regular Android and potentially a more trustworthy Co.(hopefully no spyware) but if camera a little below par then will hurt especially if affects the neat attachments-which are pluses for the device.
  • I think there's been too much hype on this phone and based on the share price, that's quite clear.

    There will likely be supply chain problems which are common among companies who hope to scale but are too small to demand devote resources to them.
    The company will probably play Elon Musk's game of trying to get more money to manufacture while spending it all faster than he can get it. The difference is, Elon had a big fat bank account to begin with from prior victories. He was selling visions... not phones. An

  • Get a grip on your English, Dieter.

    • Given that Essential has only about 100 employees, I don't see anything wrong with describing it as tiny. How much it's valued at is orthogonal.

  • Top-flight. RIght. Not when it comes to actual flight from the height of 4 feet to a pavement.

    I am done with this thread. Bye-bye

  • ... provided by the maker.

    Nuff said.

    #$%^ this advertisement piece and #$% you, Slashdot.

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